Your Essential Self

If you are still watching porn, and can’t stop, this is the moment where you ask yourself, “Am I ready to stop?”

To discover the answer to that, you have to look past your addict. You have to look inside yourself to find what’s “always true.” There’s a part of you that lies beyond your mind, your story, and even your thoughts. That’s the part of you that’s always true — the part that doesn’t change, no matter what.

You can also call this part of you “The Essential Self.” It’s the “you” that’s always here in every moment. The deeper part of you that exists out beyond your thoughts, beyond your story, and most importantly, beyond your compulsion. That’s right: your essential self is not compulsive.

Think of your fingerprints. They remain the same, even if your hands are covered in motor oil, dirt, or even gloves. No matter what happens to your hands, your fingerprints are unchanged. This is just like the difference between your essential self, and your addict self. The part of you that’s making impulsive decisions, the gloves in this case, doesn’t change your essential self — your fingerprints. Those remain the same.

So how can you experience your essential self? How can you reach down to find the part of you that’s always true, and never changes? You begin by finding some quiet time to yourself, taking a few deep breaths, and reflecting. You are looking to examine the times in your life when you weren’t compulsive. That may seem like a difficult task, but you can find these moments in your past. Your compulsions don’t grip you every second of every day, so concentrate on the times you didn’t act out. How did you feel? How were you different in those times?

By locating those feelings again within yourself, you can experience the times when you were free from the hammering of your addict’s demands. You will realize that there were times in your life when you could resist what your thoughts were saying. Grab hold of those times. In those moments, that was the real you.

See, your addict will continue pushing you towards porn, and he doesn’t really care about the negative consequences. He will tell you to remain stuck in the same behaviors over and over again, because it’s easier for your addict to just stay in the same loop. He will make you think he’s the only “you” there is. He has to make you think that way, otherwise, you could find a way to live without him.

That’s why it’s so important to push that addict aside, and find your essential self standing there. There may be some resistance at first, but that’s just your addict clinging to anything he can. What you’ll find once you look past him, is yourself living a life with less fear, and more joy. You will find yourself living the life you really deserve to live — not as an addict, but just as yourself. You can be free.